Number of EU workers in UK reached record high after Brexit vote

The number of non-British EU citizens working in the United Kingdom has reached a record high since the June 2016 Brexit referendum, according to government figures released Wednesday.

Between July and September this year, 2.38 million EU nationals were working in the U.K., or about 112,000 more people compared to the same time period last year, according to the Office of National Statistics report. This was the highest amount of people since records began in 1997.

But while there was a slight increase overall in EU citizens in the British labor market compared to 2016, the figures also showed a decrease among people from certain countries that joined the EU in 2004: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

There was also a significant increase among Romanians and Bulgarians working in the U.K., from 257,000 people in 2016 to 347,000 this year.

Joe Doyle

Pax

Amazing, reading Politico you’d believe that in comparison with the UK continental economy is doing extremely well, thankless migrants however choose to ignore the news and keep coming to the island of brexit doom and gloom, go figure

Posted on 11/15/17 | 9:53 PM CET

YellowSubmarine

Those who cannot find work, from various EU nations, are still coming here for a job.

I think we can safely put to bed the idea that the UK, with it’s supposedly inward looking brexit British, and little Englanders, did not put people off.

Quite surprising given the scare stories circulated by the UK remain camp and Brussels. It appears those after jobs don’t listen to half baked politicians or scare stories.

Despite still taking other folks unemployed from around EU it was nice to see, today, UK unemployment still going down, the number of jobless, people not in work but seeking a job, fell 59,000 to 1.42 million at 4.3%, its lowest rate since 1975 and down from 4.8% a year earlier.

UK productivity was also up significantly by 0.9% in the latest three months, the strongest growth rate for six years.

Posted on 11/15/17 | 10:13 PM CET

Peter G

I think we can put behind us the idea that foreigners are taking your jobs. If you had taken the jobs foreigners will do there would’t have been jobs to take. You know what else those foreigners do? They pay taxes in Britain and they buy things in Britain and that produces jobs for people. As any economist would be happy to tell you, economic growth in Britain is because of these foreigners not despite them.

Posted on 11/16/17 | 12:10 AM CET

Peter G

By the way Yellow, do you suppose any of them met Joe Doyle, that prince of tolerance?

Posted on 11/16/17 | 12:17 AM CET

YellowSubmarine

@Peter G

I was never worried about EU citizens coming to work or live in UK, my objection was to unlimited free movement.

Allowing the unpredictable nature of the global economy and the natural cycle of boom and bust to drive migration is a lunatic idea. In principle UK could find itself having to manage a million or more wanting to come here in a year, EU certainly couldn’t give UK guarantees it would not happen in the future.

In the meantime UK has to find all the everyday necessities like housing, schools Ect to accommodate the new arrivals, there is only so much you can do in a year, building up infrastructure, before any benefit is lost and the system descends into chaos. Why you don’t see this problem I cannot say.

UK was accused of having no plan to leave the EU, yet we had no plan, or could have a plan, to deal with varying and large numbers of EU migrants, yet that was supposed to be just fine.

Everything is good in moderation, but I would suggest following the nick clegg school of economics is probably something you need to rethink. 😉

Posted on 11/16/17 | 1:05 AM CET

Dixie Normus

@Peter G

It’s such a pity that Americans really dislike you so much.

Posted on 11/16/17 | 9:22 AM CET

Dixie Normus

Otherwise you could go pick their crops.

Posted on 11/16/17 | 9:22 AM CET

Dixie Normus

Must be something to do with the French heritage and the ‘Cheese eating surrender monkey’ theme.

Posted on 11/16/17 | 9:30 AM CET

Jack Boot

Not surprised, Citizens rights in the EU… The right to be beaten in the streets of Catalonia, riots in Brussels and in France (again). Zuess!

The EU’s a nice place to come from, but a crap place to go to.

Posted on 11/16/17 | 10:59 AM CET

John Brown

@Peter G

“As any economist would be happy to tell you, economic growth in Britain is because of these foreigners not despite them.”

Migrants may be increasing the GDP of the UK but they are reducing the GDP/capita of the UK and as they say in business :

“Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity”.

There is no way that the massively large number of migrants coming to the UK can possibly be paying sufficient in tax to cover the necessary building of houses, schools, hospitals, prisons and general infrastructure. Many are even on working tax credit.

Furthermore they take advantage of our taxpayers who provide non-contributory health and welfare benefits whilst at the same time damaging social cohesion and the environment in a country which is already one of the most densely populated major countries in Europe.